el_abuelo ,

This is despicable. What specific service was this? So I know how to avoid it if it should resurface.

ILikeBoobies ,

Not only does it say that in the first paragraph, it says it here

Five men were convicted for their part in operating Jetflicks, one of the largest illegal streaming services in the U.S., officials said.

realitista ,

Why in the world would you do this in the US?

PsychedSy ,

I mean we're dumb kids until they raid us.

BarbecueCowboy ,

There are resellers in the US who will set you up with the infrastructure to do it yourself. You don't need much and it's less expensive than you'd think, almost turnkey.

Demand is more than high enough in poor areas too, they probably made a really good return before it shut down.

Darkassassin07 ,
@Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca avatar

they probably made a really good return before it shut down.

Part of the sentence was to forfeit $1million in profits, I'd say they did pretty well for themselves.

realitista ,

I'm pretty sure the similar exists in other places too. You could host it in AWS in China or Bahrain and save yourself a bunch of risk.

el_abuelo ,

My use of the word despicable instead of disgusting probably threw you off

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-disgusting-where

ILikeBoobies ,

I just didn’t think the meme fit when it already said where

el_abuelo ,

I see. Sorry for the offence.

AFC1886VCC ,

Five men convicted by the court of the high seas for being absolute chads

todd_bonzalez ,

Honestly pretty funny to call the site "Jetflix" and advertise it as nothing but aviation videos. Nobody would know what you're up to until they pay you.

How much you wanna bet a aerospace nut subscribed to this because they love Jets, and immediately reported this site to the authorities because he got the avengers movies rather than Airbus maintenance videos or something...

Pretty stupid though to run this site out of the USA. Terrible opsec. They really just seemed to trust that nobody who cares would ever figure out what they were doing. Plenty of similar sites out there that don't even need to hide what they are because they are well outside of American jurisdiction.

a2part2 ,

Yeah. I bet he wasn't looking for a Boeing maintenance video.

woodenskewer ,
@woodenskewer@lemmy.world avatar

“substantial harm to television program copyright owners,”

Give me a fucking break

Retrograde ,
@Retrograde@lemmy.world avatar

Won't somebody think of the television program copyright owners??

Brutticus ,

I think of them when I dream about them facing a firing squad.

tonyn ,

But then who would finance the production of television programs?

Brutticus ,

I dream of a world where we are free to create art without having dance for Capital

tonyn ,

There will always be tasks that people don't want to do, and they will require compensation for motivation.

FordBeeblebrox ,

The level of compensation determines your level of society.

tonyn ,

It already does

FordBeeblebrox ,

Yup and the bare minimum is lower than poverty standards so maybe we could aspire to paying our gardeners in gold

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Those poor, poor, TV execs... They all had to settle for gold plating in their heated in-door pools and Rolls Royces instead of platinum. 😔

Dorkyd68 ,

The only thing I'm pisseed about is the fact that I was unaware of its existence. Fuck the system

BarbecueCowboy ,

You might be overestimating how much content that was. Streaming services try to maintain an illusion of neverending content but last I saw except for prime, the amount of content they offer has been trending down.

Those numbers are fairly accessible for an average person with 3 or 4 large hard drives.

Scrollone ,

You can always start creating your own personal media server, using apps such as Plex or Jellyfin, and qBittorrent, SABnzbd, etc.

FordBeeblebrox ,

I’ve been trying to do just that and it’s slow going with qB, if one was looking to avoid dens of sins where you might find a usenet key, where should I stay away from?

creamed_eels ,

Same, what a shame

Fedizen ,

They're here doing everyone a service. Why are there resources to prosecute this but not like elon musk's insider trading?

reksas ,

Because our society is profoundly corrupt

deweydecibel ,

All the comments in here are so damn tedious. Copyright is a mess, but holy shit, people tie themselves in knots to make excuses for pirates being careless and stupid

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, operate a massive illegal streaming service that has more content than everyone combined, but don't be so tacky as to charge for it.

istanbullu ,

It probably also had better user experience than all of them

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

That's the thing about all the pirate apps (apps like Weyd, Syncler, the now-defunct TVZion, etc). They're made by people that actually care, not by companies that are only in it for the money. The user experience is usually a lot better. One of those apps plus a Real Debrid subscription and you're set.

DogWater ,

Where should I go to learn more about what you're talking about

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

So that I can avoid using them. Od course

Setnof ,

I’ve heard that you can download stuff from filmfans.org and serienfans.org with jdownloader. Reportedly it’s then possible to host it locally on your own Synology NAS and use Infuse on your Apple TV for a magnificent user experience.

Hadriscus ,

Sounds like reliable hearsay

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Rumor has it that apps that use Real Debrid are way easier to use since you can just go to a TV show and watch it. Even a non technical person can use apps like Weyd. Real Debrid supposedly caches torrents on their server so you can instantly stream them over an encrypted connection.

nutsack ,

damn you just shit all over my nuts thank you

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

I've heard that Google might have information about Real Debrid and apps that support it. I cannot confirm or deny this myself.

LeFantome ,

He is saying that people that get rich selling others people’s stuff without paying for it are not “in it for the money”. What don’t you understand.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

It's amazing how I can run a better streaming service from my basement than the ones I pay for.

bleistift2 ,

Start servicing millions of users. Then we’ll talk.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

If they're servicing that many users their UX should be better, but it's not. Search should work better, but it doesn't. They should let me make playlists, but they don't.

Yes, scale is hard but it shouldn't be hard to put a clock in the pause screen showing me what time the show will be done. And that's just a tiny way Plex is better.

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

They solved a problem people had after the fragmentation :)

paris ,

The group used “sophisticated computer scripts” and software to scour piracy services (including the Pirate Bay and Torrentz) for illegal copies of TV episodes, which they then downloaded and hosted on Jetflicks’ servers, according to federal prosecutors.

They probably used Sonarr and Radarr and called it a day (or similar off-the-shelf tools available on GitHub). It's not very sophisticated at all. That combined with Jellyfin and a VPN (or Usenet or a country that doesn't care about piracy) and you have your own up and running. You could also just use free sites with an ad blocker instead of paying $10/mo like the service this article is about charged.

Unrelated to all of this: https://rentry.co/megathread

Seasoned_Greetings ,

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

For the elderly folk who write and enforce the laws that caused this to come to pass, sufficiently advanced technology just means more complex than notepad

Sam_Bass ,

If there is no need,such places would not exist

OldWoodFrame ,

If there was no DEMAND it wouldn't exist. It exists illegally specifically because it can't be done legally at the price point. That doesn't mean anyone needs it, all the content is presumably available elsewhere. It just costs money and people don't want to pay money.

I don't want to pay money either, I'm just not high minded about it.

Sam_Bass ,

Want is not the issue. You can want anything and everything but unless you are able to pay, the need arises for access to the material for a price you can pay that the "legal" owners either dont comprehend or refuse to in the name of greed.

OldWoodFrame , (edited )

That doesn't track at all. I can't afford a Lamborghini so the need arises for access to stolen Lamborghinis for cheap? It's absolutely not a need, you can just go without or only access the free media that is available to you. In the car example, I can just buy an old Civic.

If it's stealing bread to feed your family that is one thing, because it's an actual need. If it's getting stuff because you want the more expensive version instead of the version you can afford, there's no need there.

The ethical argument is that there's no one harmed because you can't afford it anyway. It's not that you need it like a starving man's bread.

Sam_Bass ,

Yeah semantics is a bitch

Jarix ,

Just one specific point of contention. A physical object is very different from an object that can infinitely and effortlessly be copied with 0 degradation of that thing.

I think you are making a good argument and but maybe not the best example.

I think there is significance in the difference that needs to be accounted for in any discussion of piracy as theft.

It is currently, and has been for a long time, legal to copy music from the radio or movies and tv shows from a broadcast(but not pay per view, or copys for distrubution) or go to a library and borrow whatever interesting (to you) media they have.

Petter1 ,

Digital media is culture. And culture should not be reserved for rich people, in my opinion.

OldWoodFrame ,

If you're saying "you should not restrict ALL culture to rich people" then, we're not. There is plenty of culture available for free on YouTube, or on broadcast TV channels, or FreeVee. And paying for one paid subscription doesn't make you rich, $10/mo or whatever is an accessible price for a subset of digital media to a non-rich person. And those libraries are sufficiently large that you would not run out of material to watch even if you only had one service.

If you're saying "everyone should be provided literally all digital content for free at all times" that is a pretty extreme position which does sort of break the economics of any content being produced. Digital content would have to be plastered in way more ads or be government subsidized or something to have the money to make more of it. That's not a political position I'd be on board with.

If you just want the current system but with you being allowed to download the stuff you want to see on services you don't pay for...again, there's an argument for that, but let's not pretend it's some high minded one. It's selfish. You probably have the money to pay for HBO Max for one month to watch the new Game of Thrones and the Barbie movie but you don't want to pay money and it's really easy not to.

Petter1 ,

Yea, I understand the problems you describe and I am not a genius who knows how to solve that problem. I want to point out that I consider ads and tracking as privacy invasive.

In my opinion the solution should be a way where we can ensure loss of media at all cost where the whole humanity has access to all human culture and knowledge in a reasonable timeframe (not the livelong time the copyrights hold today)

And competition on the market should be about the best way to deliver content, not about on delivering which content.

Blackmist ,

If five people can maintain a service bigger than all those combined, then the big streamers need to buck their fucking ideas up.

geekworking ,

They had a big library, but not the user base. They were definitely not maintaining anywhere near the infrastructure and bandwidth of major streaming platforms. Netflix claims 260 million users. It's not hard to get a giant catalog when you dont have to pay for it.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah Netflix has to pay for edge connections in major ISPs, and host cash is in places.

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